At some point I think I promised these photos, but never posted them. Some work with Theresa Manchester in the woods last summer. The plan had been to move a bit further into the woods, but the poison ivy and stinging nettle were strong on that trail, so we worked around this stream instead.

My Charlotte trip in the fall of 2015 had once near constant. Rain. Lots of rain. While driving into the mountains out of Tennessee I stopped a took a nice picture of a puffy, fair weather cloud against the otherwise blue sky.

I think it started raining about the time I hit the edge of Charlotte and rained most of the time until well after I was back home. The few outdoor shoots I worked in all, including this earlier one with Mikki Marvel, included with at least some rain and in two we were pretty well drenched along the way.

So when what had been planned to be an early morning shoot showed a cool and wet forecast for a shoot with Bree and Floofie, we made other plans and ended up working in a studio in the area. Thanks to some lighting work we did at least managed to get close to sunrise lighting.

It’s been harder to get back into editing than I’d expected. Mostly I think that comes from the number of photos to work through. It’s easy to sit down in front of my computer planning to edit, but feel overwhelmed by the amount of work waiting. I’ve finally started “faking” myself out by working through only smaller sets at a time. Focus on smaller tasks, and it’s helping. It will still probably be months before I get through everything, but I do finally feel like I’m making progress.

Winter is normally a slower time for work. Fewer people travel in the winter whether models traveling through the area for work or vacation. It’s also easier to talk yourself out of a quick trip when it’s barely above freezing and dark before 6 PM. This January was unusually quiet thanks to two rounds of snow interrupting the shoots that I had planned. Not adding things to the queue right now does help make it easier to catch up.

An example of my recent progress, a photo of Kylie Kohl from back in June.

I’m starting to tackle the huge backlog of unedited shoots dating really back to late spring. Going back to about mid May, basically if it wasn’t photographed for a paying client or a trade shoot of some form where edited photos were part of the trade, I’ve not edited the shoot. In other words I’ve shoots that were done in late spring that I’ve not edited as we move into winter.

So if you’re a model that I’ve worked with since then, expect you may see some photos from that sometime soon as I work through them. Of course I’ll also be posting some here as I finish the editing.

For today a single image of the current group I’m working on of Theresa Manchester from early June.

This post is not photography related even though there’s a photo below. It’s also probably the most personal thing I’ve posted here. If you’re here for photos and happy subjects, skip this one.

This blog has been quiet of late, and I shared the reason the reason this summer. That post ended on a somewhat optimistic tone, and that came to pass. My father became quite ill unexpectedly early in July. He recovered from the initial illness and was able to return home in August.

It didn’t last.

He went back into the hospital in September, from complications of that original illness. He never came back home. On Saturday my father passed away at the age of 68.

He had entered a cycle where every time he was able to get over one problem, another set in. He kept getting weaker. Twice in the last month I really didn’t know if he’d make it through the night. He’d recovered, but each decline began to get lower than the recovery. Much of the last months has been spent trying to maintain work and what life I could while also dealing with his health problems. He’d improved over the last couple weeks so even though he was still quite sick, his passing came as a shock.

I’m fortunate enough to have a close and supportive family. My father’s illness was hard. Losing him is the hardest thing I’ve ever dealt with. I did get to spend a good amount of time with him the last months, which I’m thankful for. I saw him two days before he passed away when I had my last conversation with him. I loved him, and I’ll miss him.

I’ll be taking the next few weeks off from photography to help with settling his affairs, helping my mother begin to move on after more than forty years with my father, and to get myself back into the mental state to create again. I plan to start shooting again roughly in mid-December. There is a long backlog of shoots from summer and fall that I’ve not edited due to lack of time and often energy. Look for more content again as I move into the New Year.

And if you have a family member or friend that you’ve not spoken with in a while, give them a call and chat a bit.

Last summer in California I’d planned a shoot on a coastal location. The model mentioned a grove of trees between the parking area and beach and we planned to work there a bit on the way.

We never actually got to the beach after I saw the trees.

Generally if you put me in a grove of trees, around rocks, or near water, I’m good for a while. Such is the case with this photo of Mikki Marvel from October near Charlotte. We came to a location she’d and this grove of bamboo. It ended up being the only place we worked that day while dodging the rain that marked my whole trip to Charlotte.

Continuing to show some film work with these scans of Freya Gallows on B&W film from back in April. We’d planned to work outdoors, but the threat of rain ended up with us moving into the studio instead for this work. Same day as the earlier posted work with her and Bree Addams together.

I like how these worked. The limitations in my scanner showed up here though as the roll was a bit unevenly exposed from I think a mix of expired film and me experimenting with lighting. Overall I find these Kodak TriX 400 works well for me. The grain is there, but doesn’t overwhelm. It also seems to work nicely outdoors and in the studio.

As I mentioned this roll of film had expired a few months before the shoot. They were also among the first batch of work I developed myself as opposed to sending away to a lab. As the other roll developed with this one (last week’s of Vex Voir) didn’t show the uneven exposure these did. I credit that to the film being expired, and really not well treated given I bought the roll (along with a few others) out of a bin in the sun at a flea market.